Cheap thrills —

Drone copter cash-bombs city park in Michigan

On Tuesday, an eight-engine remotely piloted helicopter circled over a park in Grand Rapids, Michigan—and then started dropping cash. A cloud of dollar bills was released from compartments in the drone and floated down on a lunchtime crowd in Rosa Parks Circle, causing a scramble for the cash—an estimated $100.

"It was hovering over the center of the circle, and after a couple of minutes it dropped what appeared to be money," Melvin Blohm, a creative consultant for the Michigan newspaper website MLive, told Grand Rapids Press' Todd Chance. "Once people realized the cash was real, they swarmed to pick it up.”

Bystander video of the drone that dropped cash on a Grand Rapids park on Tuesday.

Blohm said he saw people atop the nearby JW Marriott hotel roof who appeared to be controlling the drone. The drone appeared to drop about $50 cash from one of four compartments; another compartment was already empty when Blohm spotted it.

A number of children rushed to pick up the money and were caught on cell phone video by onlookers. But parents of the children and local police expressed concern that it could have caused them to be struck by a car because of their proximity to the street. Sergeant Terry Dixon of the Grand Rapids Police Department told Chance, “There’s money dropping from the sky and how often does that happen? The problem is that it could become a safety hazard for the kids or the youths that are running to get to the money—they could be crossing the roadway and inadvertently be struck by a car or something like that.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the drone drop; after dropping the cash bomb, the octocopter flew off toward the offices of MLive and the Grand Rapids Press.